I've been reading Kin Stanley Robinson's New York 2014. Big book, 613 pages. I'm on 399.
The title tells you what the book's about. There's been two major "pulses"–he calls them–between now and then, with the result that the sea level's been raised 50 feet. Lower Manhattan is now a network of canals threaded among tall buildings. Finances rule. National governments seem much pared away.
All well and good.
But it seems that Robinson's been reading OOO. Concerning the gray-world financial system (319): “It grew in the dark, it’s a stack, a hyperobject, an accidental megastructure.” Has he read Tim Morton, or just someone who's read Morton? And of course Morton is all about anthropogenic climate change which, obviously, is central to the book, though in the past.
A bit later (399): “Have you ever noticed that our building is a kind of actor network that can do things? We got the cloud star, the lawyer, the building expert, the building itself, the police detective, the money man...add the getaway driver and it’s a fucking heist movie!” “Actor network”, that’s Latour, and Robinson certainly does treat that particular building as a Latourian actor.
It goes: Met Life tower in lower Manhattan, where all the central characters live; New York City; the world.
More later.